When the body of a small-time crook named Mickey Parfitt washes up on the tide, no one grieves; far from it. But William Monk, commander of the River Police, is puzzled by the expensive silk cravat used to strangle Parfitt. How did this elegant scarf—whose original owner was obviously a man of substance—end up embedded in the neck of a wharf rat who richly deserved his sordid end? Although Monk and his fearless wife Hester would prefer to pin a medal on Parfitt's killer, duty leads them in another direction: to an unresolved crime from the past, to blackmail and more murder, and to a deadly confrontation with some of the empire's most respected men. No one else re-creates the atmosphere of gas-lit London quite like Edgar Award winner Anne Perry, creator of both the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series and the William and Hester Monk series of Victorian-era detective fiction, as well as her annual standalone Christmas specials, which star peripheral characters from the Pitt or Monk series.